Political Crime

Theodore Roosevelt was climbing into his car in Milwaukee on 14 October 1912, campaigning for a third term as president, when a former saloonkeeper named John Schrank stepped from the crowd and shot him in the chest. The bullet had already been slowed by a folded steel glasses case and a fifty page speech manuscript in his breast pocket before it lodged in his chest muscle.

With the crowd turning on the gunman, Roosevelt shouted for Schrank to be left unharmed and handed to police. Then, bleeding and reasoning from his own hunting experience that he was not coughing blood and so his lung was untouched, he refused hospital treatment and walked onto the stage. He opened his address with the line that followed him ever after: “It takes more than that to kill a bull moose.” He spoke for roughly ninety minutes before finally agreeing to see a doctor. Surgeons judged the bullet too close to vital organs to remove, and Roosevelt carried it in his chest for the rest of his life.

⬅ See all events from 14 October